Snowy Mountains Travel Guide

 iandsmith Says:  People came from all over Australia and what had once been isolated grazing country became a boom town. Several thousand endured the winter snows and freezing temperatures. They were ill-prepared and many were forced to see out the winter in canvas tents. However the rewards... 

 iandsmith Says:  At the Snowy Mountains Highway intersection we headed west and then turned off onto Long Plain Road for 15kms and then another 8 kilometres on more dirt that I won’t ever bother with again to reach Blue Waterholes. It was a spot I’d wanted to return to in order to visit a... 

 iandsmith Says:  Other trekkers came and went as we grafted our way along the narrow trail past snow gums until, at times, the trail itself was indiscernible with fresh summer shrub branches overgrowing its meandering ways yet somehow you knew where it went and moved on, stumbling... 

 iandsmith Says:  After a time we pushed on down the mountains, past Spencer’s Creek and on to Guthega, stopping while someone chose to shoot a watercourse at Pipers Creek en route. Said person realised when Guthega carpark was reached they had left their new 10-20mm lens behind which... 

 iandsmith Says:  DEAD HORSE, DEAD TREES, DEAD ROCKS, IS THERE LIFE UP HERE?It was amazing how dog tired we were after each day and yet, in the morning, we felt revived enough to attack yet another walk. This time it was to be Dead Horse Gap from Crackenback and then down Thredbo Creek back... 

 iandsmith Says:  It was, on recollection, one of the truly great places I have seen in Australia, up alongside Lake Judd, Karijini and Carnarvon Gorge. Its aura and mystique will live with me forever.As we were leaving a couple came into view. First the lady, who was from Russia, then the... 

 iandsmith Says:  In ages past the aborigines, though their tribal groups didn’t intermingle in the valleys below, joined together on the high plains in summer to feast upon this food bonanza. These days the moths carry traces of arsenic upon them from the crop spraying hundreds of kilometres... 

 iandsmith Says:  There was a yearning inside me. I had missed the walk a couple of years before and it gnawed at me. Pictures of Blue Lake that others had taken were so enticing; now, today, it was my turn. Christmas Day 2012 -We’d had such a hard time of it the day before that, by mutual... 

 iandsmith Says:  The flora was abundant but the legacy of the 2003 bushfires was everywhere. Dead limbs still reached for the sky, slowly being overtaken by new growth but it had some way to go.I finished opposite the carpark and tried thumbing a lift back, striking it lucky at the fifth... 

 iandsmith Says:  Still, the weather was the main thing to keep one’s eye on. Clouds were banking up on the horizon and it actually spat rain about three times but never dumped thank goodness.Towards the top of the 4 km track it crosses the river a few times, on well made bridges except for... 

 iandsmith Says:  It all started so well. There I was, wallet in hand, ready to buy an annual pass and, what did I hear? “If you have a pension card it’s free to get into the Snowy Mountains NP.” A wave of euphoria came over me. I was thinking skiing on the cheap, how good would that be, but,... 

 iandsmith Says:  After lunch I was let off the leash to do the Waterfall Walk. It was getting a trifle warmer because we had descended a few hundred metres and much of this walk was protected from the wind so there was no respite there. Still, it was a whole lot cooler than on the coast.I... 

 iandsmith Says:  I started making up time on the way back but that got thwarted when I left my Christmas sunnies behind while changing lens on the camera. I managed to retrieve them but was sweating when I did so, perhaps more at the thought that I may have lost them than pure physical...